 |
| Fraser Seitel |
Even before Donald Trump finished patting himself on the back for what will likely turn out to be the most catastrophic announcement in the history of catastrophic announcements, at least two guests in the White House Rose Garden couldn’t have been happier.
As a result of the President’s monumental tariff declaration, no longer were Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and National Security Advisor Mike Waltz first in line to get fired for their open-line Houthi bombing broadcast.
That dubious distinction would now be shared by two most unlikely bedfellows, Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent and Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, the Cabinet members most responsible for allowing Trump to single-handedly wreck a booming U.S. economy.
Bessent and Lutnick together are a case study in how an exceptional reputation, earned over decades of effort and performance, can be ruined in three head-spinning months.
First, make no mistake, Trump’s tariff plan—which is really more of a “hope” than a “plan”—will be an unmitigated disaster. It will reward no one and hurt everyone, from the wealthiest investor to the poorest day laborer. As a result of Trump’s harebrained scheme, an economy that was humming when it was handed over three months ago will suffer the following over the next months:
- Rising prices on everything from groceries to clothing to cars.
- Rising inflation.
- Falling corporate profits and business spending.
- Declining U.S. growth.
- Rising unemployment.
- Cratering stock and bond prices causing …
- Crushing losses in retirement income and 401 (k) s and quite possibly ...
- Recession in the U.S.
On top of all of this woe, the “uncertainty” among individuals, companies and investors that plagued the run-up to tariffs has been heightened, because neither Trump nor Bessent nor Lutnick have a clue as to how other countries will react.
In a phrase, Trump’s tariff folly will literally “make America poor again.” And as Trump never accepts blame for what he has wrought, some subordinate or two will have to pay with their scalps.
By all rights, the first to go ought to be the architect of this cockamamie tariff madness. That would be Peter Navarro, the notorious anti-China hawk, who spent most of his life toiling in obscurity at University of California, Irvine, until Trump plucked him up and made him tariff guru. But Navarro has the wholly legitimate excuse of being a lifelong economic crackpot whose extreme views on punishing tariffs were well known before Trump hired him.
So that leaves Bessent and Lutnick, two previously respected and successful Wall Street investment managers, to face the chopping block for the tariff carnage. Both are billionaires who thoroughly understand international business and economics and clearly know better. But neither seem to have the courage to challenge the views of the lunatic-in-chief.
Treasury Secretary Bessent is a timid, sad-eyed, disturbingly formal man who’s ill-suited for the impossible task of defending Trump’s nonsensical tariffs.
In fact, Bessent seems ill-suited for any public position. He dreads being interviewed on television, where he responds haltingly with uncertainty, to the point where you can’t help but feel sorry for him. He appears incapable of speaking simply and directly. When CNN’s Kaitlin Collins—for some reason the only interviewer with whom Bessent seems to feel comfortable—asked him to define the “short-term pain” the administration has asked regular Americans to suffer, the Secretary’s verbatim reply was typical:
“Well, again I, I think there are, there are two, two things there to unpack, Kaitlin. One is on what we were doing on government spending. So, we are bringing down government jobs, we are bringing down government borrowing, so this unsustainable level of government stimulus is stopping. And then on the other side, private-sector jobs and private-sector borrowing will take over. Those may not be perfectly matched, but we did see an increase of 10,000 manufacturing jobs last month. On the other, when you think about, especially for working Americans, could we get a price adjustment due to the tariffs? Maybe, maybe not.
Not exactly a media relations advisor’s dream quote, but revealing nonetheless in just how tone-deaf and unable Treasury Secretary Bessent is in answering simple, common-sense questions about the impact of the tariffs on the lives of everyday Americans.
Commerce Secretary Lutnick, on the other hand, is much more polished and self-assured than his colleague at Treasury. Lutnick’s problem is that he’s morphed from a sophisticated business leader into an embarrassing, unquestioning cheerleader for Trump.
Lutnick, former CEO of Wall Street financial giant Cantor Fitzgerald, who gained wide acclaim for his generosity after tragically losing his brother and 650 colleagues in the Twin Towers on 9/11, is perhaps the greatest disappointment in Trump World.
As Commerce Secretary and a former Wall Street titan, he has the knowledge, power and authority—even more so than Trump—to calm the markets by updating the public on the strategy and pace and direction of trade negotiations with other nations. But instead of providing a steadying voice in the midst of chaos, Lutnick chooses to repeat Trump talking points. And he’s done it with an arrogance that befits the stereotype of the condescending billionaire.
The day after Trump’s Rose Garden speech, cheerleader Lutnick made the obligatory rounds of cable TV. When CNN asked how world markets might be reassured, Lutnick replied: “Let Donald Trump run the global economy. He knows what he’s doing. He’s been talking about it for 35 years. Let him fix it. I understand. It’s broken. Let him fix it. Our $36 trillion deficit, right, is going to ruin our children’s lives and our grandchildren’s lives. Let Donald Trump fix the American economy.”
All the Commerce Secretary lacked was the short skirt and pom poms.
As markets plunged in response to Trump’s tariff terror, cooler heads argued that it might all be part of the President’s master negotiating strategy: first blast the world with outrageous demands and then back off to accede to more realistic adjustments. And it could be that Bessent and Lutnick, therefore, are playing bad cop/good cop, talking tough now but, realizing the U.S. economy hangs in the balance, settling later for more moderate concessions from trading partners. In other words, not to worry, Donald Trump knows exactly what he’s doing.
As the Treasury Secretary himself might put it with his customary emphatic eloquence: “Maybe, maybe not.”
***
Fraser P. Seitel has been a communications consultant, author and teacher for 40 years. He is the author of the Pearson text “The Practice of Public Relations,” now in its 14th edition, and co-author of “Rethinking Reputation” and “Idea Wise.” He may be reached directly at [email protected].
Every day, Marco Rubio is forced to walk a delicate public relations line where he unhesitatingly supports Donald Trump’s policies while not encouraging the President's obnoxious personal peccadilloes.
Humor is a strength of democracy. It punctures pomposity and invites self-correction. Fear narrows; comedy opens. Today, the far right isn’t trying to out-joke comedy—it’s trying to silence it through economic, political, and legal pressure.
Curtis Sliwa could become the next mayor of New York City—if he can manage to convince the city’s powerful corporate leaders that he’s a viable candidate.
